Company Reports - Beacon International Dispatch Ltd.
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Beacon International Dispatch Ltd.
Doing whatever it takes
Written by Martin Slofstra & Produced by Irtaza Malik
Who says size is the be-all and end-all? Not Beacon which is about to celebrate its 40th year of service in the freight forwarding business. “At Beacon, we have always been known as a mid-size freight forwarder that can compete with the big guys but we offer the small company service,” says Troy Guerin, vice-president of sales, who has been with the company for 12 years. “We specializing in doing things the other companies may not do.”
Beacon International Despatch Limited was founded by Rolf von Fintel and Frank S. Sellar in 1969 in Brantford, Ont. A privately owned company, Beacon is renowned for moving all types of cargo to thousands of destinations worldwide. Beacon has Canadian offices coast to coast and over 75 agents in more than 100 countries covering five continents worldwide. Beacon and its network of agents have equipment and facilities to accommodate ocean, air, and land transportation of goods to virtually any destination on the globe.
Beacon began operations by servicing what was at the time, a previously underdeveloped trade lane between Canada and Australia/New Zealand. Almost immediately, Beacon offered Canadian exporters a biweekly service to all base ports in Australia and New Zealand. Within its first year, Beacon had diversified its ocean freight consolidation service to include major trading centers throughout Europe and South America, as well as undertaking special projects to underdeveloped nations in Africa and the Middle East.
END-TO-END SERVICE
By 1973, Beacon had opened branch offices in Montreal and Toronto, allowing it to compete with large, multinational forwarders. In 1976, Beacon introduced air freight services by opening an office in Toronto’s Pearson International Airport Cargo Terminals. This diversification allowed Beacon to offer its’ customers a complete service package for their freight movement needs.
The end-to-end service has always been its hallmark, and today Beacon is recognized as one of Canada’s premier independent international freight forwarders. It remains as dedicated as it was in 1969 to providing reliable freight forwarding service and expertise at the highest level, at the most competitive price possible.
“We offer a complete service for our customers,” says Guerin, which in many cases takes it well beyond the shipment and movement of goods. The company may help its customers write a letter of credit, design a purchase order or packing slip, he says. Or it could be bringing in a forklift, provide packaging expertise, “whatever the customer is looking for. We want to make it as easy as possible for our customers, where they just send us an invoice and we do the rest,” he says.
UNIQUE REQUIREMENTS
The way, Guerin likes to describe it, every situation in the freight forwarding business is unique. Like snowflakes, no two shipments are ever alike. “You have to be able to change the way you do things. Nothing is ever black and white, it’s more like everything is grey,” says Guerin. “You can’t do everything the same way, it just doesn’t work. Each customer has a special type of requirements.”
“For example, I was dealing with a company that was importing from Croatia. We were discussing the rates and the shipper decided to move the freight in themselves without the consignees involved. Unfortunately, two of the three containers that came into Montreal, got inspected, and were discovered not to have the proper packaging. They were actually going to be turned around and go back to Croatia at quite an expense. They called us to get involved. We went through the whole thing with the ocean liner and got it all sorted out,” says Guerin. “We’re not just here for the one job. We will find a way to get it done.”
To help it meet its customer diverse requirement, Guerin uses technology and the latest in documentation software.
The company’s on-line system allows any Beacon customer (shipper, consignee or agent) to look up the status of all of their shipments currently being routed through Beacon. Available options allow users to narrow their search by Waybill number or date range.
Beacon utilizes:
• Custom software developed to manage all its operational requirements including documentation, communications, and freight tracking and tracing;
• Fully integrated accounting and financial software to process customer and supplier billing information as well as internal financial reporting requirements; and,
• Electronic e-mail, website, and web-tracking.
In fact, Beacon received a Chamber of Commerce technology award in 2004 for its documentation system. “We spent over $1 million to develop it, and continue to invest in it every year,’ says Guerin.
Sophisticated as the company and its technology may become, and it is evolving every day, one thing will not change at Beacon, it’s personal service.
“We’ve got that small-town mentality,” he says. “We started off in Brantford, which shows up not only in the way it treats its customers but also its employees.
“One thing that always has been a big part of Beacon is keeping their employees,” he says. One telling statistic? About 15 of the employees have been with the company for at least 10 years. “We make sure they are trained. We will pay for all that. We really are a family."
Beacon International Despatch Limited was founded by Rolf von Fintel and Frank S. Sellar in 1969 in Brantford, Ont. A privately owned company, Beacon is renowned for moving all types of cargo to thousands of destinations worldwide. Beacon has Canadian offices coast to coast and over 75 agents in more than 100 countries covering five continents worldwide. Beacon and its network of agents have equipment and facilities to accommodate ocean, air, and land transportation of goods to virtually any destination on the globe.
Beacon began operations by servicing what was at the time, a previously underdeveloped trade lane between Canada and Australia/New Zealand. Almost immediately, Beacon offered Canadian exporters a biweekly service to all base ports in Australia and New Zealand. Within its first year, Beacon had diversified its ocean freight consolidation service to include major trading centers throughout Europe and South America, as well as undertaking special projects to underdeveloped nations in Africa and the Middle East.
END-TO-END SERVICE
By 1973, Beacon had opened branch offices in Montreal and Toronto, allowing it to compete with large, multinational forwarders. In 1976, Beacon introduced air freight services by opening an office in Toronto’s Pearson International Airport Cargo Terminals. This diversification allowed Beacon to offer its’ customers a complete service package for their freight movement needs.
The end-to-end service has always been its hallmark, and today Beacon is recognized as one of Canada’s premier independent international freight forwarders. It remains as dedicated as it was in 1969 to providing reliable freight forwarding service and expertise at the highest level, at the most competitive price possible.
“We offer a complete service for our customers,” says Guerin, which in many cases takes it well beyond the shipment and movement of goods. The company may help its customers write a letter of credit, design a purchase order or packing slip, he says. Or it could be bringing in a forklift, provide packaging expertise, “whatever the customer is looking for. We want to make it as easy as possible for our customers, where they just send us an invoice and we do the rest,” he says.
UNIQUE REQUIREMENTS
The way, Guerin likes to describe it, every situation in the freight forwarding business is unique. Like snowflakes, no two shipments are ever alike. “You have to be able to change the way you do things. Nothing is ever black and white, it’s more like everything is grey,” says Guerin. “You can’t do everything the same way, it just doesn’t work. Each customer has a special type of requirements.”
“For example, I was dealing with a company that was importing from Croatia. We were discussing the rates and the shipper decided to move the freight in themselves without the consignees involved. Unfortunately, two of the three containers that came into Montreal, got inspected, and were discovered not to have the proper packaging. They were actually going to be turned around and go back to Croatia at quite an expense. They called us to get involved. We went through the whole thing with the ocean liner and got it all sorted out,” says Guerin. “We’re not just here for the one job. We will find a way to get it done.”
To help it meet its customer diverse requirement, Guerin uses technology and the latest in documentation software.
The company’s on-line system allows any Beacon customer (shipper, consignee or agent) to look up the status of all of their shipments currently being routed through Beacon. Available options allow users to narrow their search by Waybill number or date range.
Beacon utilizes:
• Custom software developed to manage all its operational requirements including documentation, communications, and freight tracking and tracing;
• Fully integrated accounting and financial software to process customer and supplier billing information as well as internal financial reporting requirements; and,
• Electronic e-mail, website, and web-tracking.
In fact, Beacon received a Chamber of Commerce technology award in 2004 for its documentation system. “We spent over $1 million to develop it, and continue to invest in it every year,’ says Guerin.
Sophisticated as the company and its technology may become, and it is evolving every day, one thing will not change at Beacon, it’s personal service.
“We’ve got that small-town mentality,” he says. “We started off in Brantford, which shows up not only in the way it treats its customers but also its employees.
“One thing that always has been a big part of Beacon is keeping their employees,” he says. One telling statistic? About 15 of the employees have been with the company for at least 10 years. “We make sure they are trained. We will pay for all that. We really are a family."
